


silence, a beat, darkness

by theviolonist



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:13:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn sees through the lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	silence, a beat, darkness

Zayn sees through the lies. 

He sees through the half-truths, the slurred I loves you's; he sees the dirt underneath the glitter. He's like a magician in reverse; he sees through the spells and he knows how to undo them, nimble fingers slipping and catching in the holes, the parts that hurt and sting. He knows how to pull, once, hard, and make everything fall apart. 

Harry's got a bruise under his chin, tender and blue and yellow. Zayn sucks on it lightly. He jabs his tongue like a dagger. Zayn isn't gentle. Harry winces. 

Zayn understands the anger, he understands Louis sometimes, his knitted brows and the way he sometimes shrinks on himself when he's near Harry. He is lucid enough to see the way they don't fit, the way they sound wrong together, Louis serious and _true_ beneath all his silliness and Harry loose and full of things he just _says_. He even understands the disappointment, if he wants to. 

(It makes him shudder, sometimes, how much power he could have over them. He sees Louis, and he thinks, _if I'd just tug this thread, here, and lay him bare_ ). 

He lied when he said he would stop smoking. He likes the smoke in his mouth too much, the long, white song that slides between his lips when he releases it, the sharp, acrid coughs. Sometimes, when the night has fallen over them and watches them jealously, its eyelids violently pink with glitter, he and Harry smoke. Harry closes his lips around the burning tip and they breathe together for a second, falsely accorded – Zayn blows the smoke across their joined lips. It's not _together_ – it's _apart, close_. 

-

"Stop that," he says through his teeth, low and rumbling like a storm. 

"Stop what?," Harry answers, vicious and hysterical. The tears are rolling down his cheeks, and Zayn _knows_ , he knows it's pretend, and it makes him so angry all of a sudden, he wants to punch something, and break, break. 

"Stop," he repeats, but Harry doesn't stop. 

They watch each other as though they were sworn enemies, molten lava leaking out of their pupils. The setting sun mocks them and washes its faded red over them. 

"I'll never obey you," Harry whispers fiercely, his lips obscenely red. He looks like a furious child – his tears glisten on his skin. 

Zayn thinks, _I see through you_ , but he doesn't. 

-

Zayn won't be careful. He will be slow, and gentle if he has to, feather-soft hands, words crushed on his tongue, but he won't be careful. He doesn't want to. He'll hold Harry down until he doesn't lie. Zayn knows Harry's eyes when he doesn't lie, wide and scared, filled with too much green to fit in his pupils, spilling out. He says _please_ and _sorry_ and _i love you_ and he always, always regrets it after. 

Zayn is a magician, and he likes when Harry unravels and falls open before him, undone and naked. He wastes his spells on Harry's turned back, with _come back_ and _stay_ and _go away_. 

But he's never careful. He's reckless and wild, because he likes to taste the salt on Harry's skin, and it never tastes better than when he's been crying and he's wrecked and little, needing help. Zayn gives it to him like you would give sight back to a blind man, like a prophet, and he lets him take it, even if it's too big and he's going to break it. Maybe Zayn likes it when things break. 

-

Things end. Zayn knows that. Sometimes he's the only one who knows, and he watches the others run around and scream _forever_ at the top of their lungs. Zayn can't blame them. He's been young too, once. It was over like too fast, too, quick like lightning – it cut through his skin and left him raw. 

(But he pushes Harry down in the sand, messes his curls and makes him cry. He says, _it won't last_ , and Harry says, _it will_. Everything with Harry is a war – his skin is a battlefield.)

Sometimes Zayn believes too. He watches Harry's lips slowly turn red in the dusk, and he thinks _cherry_ instead of _blood_. It doesn't happen a lot (but that's because Harry's lips call for slaughter), but it happens. He tries to let it last, but it never does – someone says something or does something and suddenly all he can think is, _dirt, dirt, dirt_ , the low thrum of his blood beneath his skin brewing like a hurricane. 

(He wakes up Harry in the middle of a dream and fucks him, hazed, eyes hooded, until they can't feel their bones, sweat-slick skin slipping and ripping, stretching taut like tangled wires on their skeletons.)

Zayn sees the ugliness. He sees the hands that reach to touch but fail (Louis, a smile falling against his teeth, crashing and breaking), he sees the sneaky little lies and the disgust and the fear. He doesn't want to, but he does, and the only thing he can do is expose it, lay it bare and wait for it to blow up. It doesn't look that different from fireworks, in the end. 

(Harry bites his neck like a child, but he draws blood. He wears leather on his wrists and clad to his back. Louis tells him, _you look beautiful_ and Zayn tells him, _you look like a whore_.)

Harry is a trainwreck. Zayn sees it when he laughs with a girl, wide and _fake,_ and then prays in the darkness, his knees scrapping the concrete. He never says anything. 

-

"Your mouth tastes like ashes," Harry says to him one day, leaning heavily against him, the heat from his body seeping into Zayn's torso. Their heartbeats aren't synchronized; Zayn likes the messiness of it, of _them_. 

Zayn would say, _yours tastes like embers_ , but he doesn't say things like that, so instead he says, "Shut up," and kisses him again, hard and rough, hot with all the anger he doesn't have. 

He doesn't know Harry well, but he doesn't want to. He likes him like he is now, childish and ignorant, stupid green eyes lit with a rebellious flame. He likes his spine, the way he slinks smoothly like a feline and then quietly breaks between Zayn's fingers. He doesn't care about the before and the after of him, only about the now, immediate and urgent, the blinding pleasure and the dirty little secrets. 

He likes the brute force of Harry's punches. He licks his cuts and tells him to stay still, rosy tongue smoothing over the red, open flesh, whispers, _breathe, babe_. 

He likes the way he never breathes. 

-

Zayn sees through the lies. 

Sometimes, when he sees one, he takes it into his hands and he crushes it, tiny wings crumpling like paper. He likes his truth like he likes his flesh, bared and white-hot, burning his lips. 

Harry – he doesn't know why he likes Harry, but it doesn't matter. Maybe he likes the dirt on his fingers and the blood in his mouth, and maybe he likes the crazy, breathy beggings, the insolence and the punishment. 

Harry says, _you'll never see me again_ and _I don't lie_ , but all Zayn hears is, _I'll always come back_. 

So he sits back and waits, and Harry always comes back.


End file.
